Author's Notes: Short, un-sweet, cliff-hangery, POV, coming of age, new-awareness, Dawn/key fic. Potentially cannon. Set anywhere post the start of season six.
Summary: "It's not so much the little things that bother her. It's the big things. The things that she knows – or thinks she knows - and can't tell." Dawn POV.
Rated: PG
Date Started/Finished: June 5th 2005
By Delenn
It's not so much the little things that bother her. It's the big things. The things that she knows – or thinks she knows - and can't tell.
It's the pain she sees in their eyes.
It's the big things, like how nobody is ever around anymore. How she's old enough to spend nights home alone but too young to go with anyone.
At times it makes no sense. Then, the next minute it's perfectly clear.
They can't see – not the way she can.
At first, she thought everyone could see the love and the animosity and the hurt and the friendships blooming all over the place. Then she started seeing colors that nobody else could.
Started to watch how at rejection, he turns from an ocean blue to a blue-black to an angry red, and then gets all muddled up in a rainbow of violence.
Realized that her sister was colorless, except for two particular shades of pinkish-reddish-black, both to do with him. Both only with him. Never with her - with her, her sister is always this shade-less color, and she doesn't even know it.
Slowly, painfully, she's starting to feel the big things more and more. Sure, she still complains about the little things, but it's mostly to hide it.
She's afraid.
Unconsciously, she mirrors the fears of those around her, the 'what-if-they-find-out's. Because inside, she's starting to feel different - different from everyone else around her.
She's feeling older, more tired, like she's lived lifetimes watching and now that she's finally here, there's simply more watching.
She's starting to feel like she expected more out of this life – a feeling that scares her unimaginably. Because she doesn't know who she was or what she was watching or why she's never felt or seen like this before.
Everyone tells her that she's growing up, but she doesn't think they realize how. And the how is a big thing to miss. A lot more important than the length of her hair or her skirts.
Big things, like the fact that her color is always green – all around her, all over her - and only once did someone ever see it.
Feels like she's invisible, cloaked in that green, alone, watching – waiting, for what, she doesn't know, and that scares her even more.